In 1970, Honecker initiated a political power struggle that led, with support of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, to him replacing Walter Ulbricht as General Secretary of the SED and chairman of the National Defence Council.

Under his command, the country adopted a programme of "consumer socialism" and moved towards the international community by normalising relations with West Germany and also becoming a full member of the UN, in what is considered one of his greatest political successes.

As Cold War tensions eased in the late 1980s with the advent of perestroika and glasnost—the liberal reforms introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev—Honecker refused all but cosmetic changes to the East German political system.

He cited the consistent hardliner attitudes of Kim Il Sung, Fidel Castro and Nicolae Ceaușescu whose respective governments of North Korea, Cuba and Romania had been critical of reforms.

Honecker was forced to resign by the SED Politburo in October 1989 in a bid to improve the government's image in the eyes of the public; the effort was unsuccessful, and the regime would collapse entirely the following month.

This change from the strict rule of Ferdinand Eduard von Stumm to French military occupation provided the backdrop for what Wilhelm Honecker understood as proletarian exploitation, and introduced young Erich to communism.

[14] In 1928 he returned to Wiebelskirchen and began a traineeship as a roofer with his uncle, but quit to attend the International Lenin School in Moscow and Magnitogorsk after the KJVD handpicked him for a course of study there.

[24] In May 1945 Honecker was "picked up" by chance in Berlin by Hans Mahle and taken to the Ulbricht Group, a collective of exiled German communists that had returned from the Soviet Union to Germany after the end of the Nazi regime.

Within the state's socialist single party government, Honecker determinedly resumed his political career and the following year was named as a candidate member of the Politbüro of the SED's Central Committee.

While 1973 brought the World Festival of Youth and Students to East Berlin, soon dissident artists such as Wolf Biermann were expelled and the Ministry for State Security raised its efforts to suppress political resistance.

East Germany also participated in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki in 1975, which attempted to improve relations between the West and the Eastern Bloc, and became a full member of the United Nations.

[29] This trip had been planned twice before, including September 1984,[41] but was initially blocked by the Soviet leadership which mistrusted the special East-West German relationship,[42] particularly efforts to expand East Germany's limited independence in the realm of foreign policy.

[45][46] Gorbachev grew to dislike Honecker, and by 1988 was lumping him in with Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu as a "Gang of Four": a group of inflexible hardliners unwilling to make reforms.

[47] According to White House experts Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Gorbachev looked to Communist leaders in Eastern Europe to follow his example of perestroika and glasnost.

[50] One month after the 1989 Polish legislative election in which Lech Wałęsa and the Solidarity Citizens' Committee unexpectedly won 99 out of 100 seats, at the Warsaw Pact summit on 7–8 July 1989 in Bucharest, the Soviet Union reaffirmed its shift from the Brezhnev Doctrine of the limited sovereignty of its member states, and announced "freedom of choice".

The reaction to this from Erich Honecker in the Daily Mirror of 19 August 1989 was too late and showed the current loss of power: "Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic.

[47] As unrest visibly grew, large numbers began fleeing the country through the West German embassies in Prague and Budapest, as well as over the borders of the "socialist brother" states.

[75] To the surprise of Honecker and the other SED leaders in attendance, several hundred members of the Free German Youth — reckoned as the future vanguard of the party and nation — began chanting, "Gorby, help us!

[47] After a crisis meeting of the Politburo on 10–11 October 1989, Honecker's planned state visit to Denmark was cancelled and, despite his resistance, at the insistence of the regime's number-two-man, Egon Krenz, a public statement was issued that called for "suggestions for attractive socialism".

[92] During November the People's Chamber had already set up a committee to investigate corruption and abuses of office, with Honecker being alleged to have received annual donations from the National Academy of Architecture of around 20,000 marks as an "honorary member".

[99] However, on the evening of the following day, 30 January, Honecker was again released from custody: The district court had annulled the arrest warrant and, due to medical reports, certified him unfit for detention and interrogation.

[118] In June 1992, Chilean President Patricio Aylwin, leader of a center-left coalition, finally assured German Chancellor Helmut Kohl that Honecker would be leaving the embassy in Moscow.

[123] On 12 May 1992, while under protection in the Chilean embassy in Moscow, Honecker, along with several co-defendants, including Erich Mielke, Willi Stoph, Heinz Kessler, Fritz Streletz and Hans Albrecht, were accused in a 783-page indictment of taking part in the "collective manslaughter" of 68 people as they attempted to flee East Germany.

[125][127] During his 70-minute-long statement to the court on 3 December 1992, Honecker said that he had political responsibility for the building of the Berlin Wall and subsequent deaths at the borders, but claimed he was "without juridical, legal or moral guilt".

[130] While accepting political responsibility for the deaths at the Wall, he believed he was free of any "legal or moral guilt", and thought that East Germany would go down in history as "a sign that socialism is possible and is better than capitalism".

[131] By the time of the proceedings Honecker was already seriously ill.[132] A new CT scan in August 1992 had confirmed an ultrasound examination made in Moscow and the existence of a malignant tumour in the right lobe of his liver.

[133] Based on these findings and additional medical testimonies, Honecker's lawyers requested that the legal proceedings, as far as they were aimed against their client, be abandoned and the arrest warrant against him withdrawn; the cases against both Mielke and Stoph had already been postponed due to their ill health.

[29][failed verification] Sources differ on whether Honecker and Baumann married in 1947[145] or 1949,[144] but in 1952 he fathered an illegitimate daughter, Sonja (b. December 1952-2022), with Margot Feist, a People's Chamber member and chairperson of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation.

In September 1950, Baumann wrote directly to Walter Ulbricht to inform him of her husband's extramarital activity in the hope of him pressuring Honecker to end his relationship with Feist.

[153] Dmitri Vrubel's 1990 mural on the Berlin Wall My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, depicting a socialist fraternal kiss between Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev, became known around the world.